New Yorkers are not widely known for their shyness in making suggestions. Now the city’s leadership is encouraging them to take their ideas to the internet.
Change by Us NYC is New York City’s latest attempt to encourage energy efficiency innovation. Initiated by CEOs for Cities, a think tank for urban leaders, the Change by Us website combines the messaging tools of social media with the concept of a new energy economy to create a new model for the traditional town hall meeting.
“A shift is underway in the way some Americans define ‘community’ and the tools they have to pursue it. Bolstered by grassroots movements and technology, the ability of people to connect with one another has dramatically accelerated, creating a unique opportunity to redefine community at the citizen level,” the website says.
The website was created by Local Projects, a media design company that specializes in projects for museums and other public spaces. According to firm’s founder and principal Jake Barton, the same type of website will soon be implemented in Philadelphia, Seattle, San Jose and several other major US cities.
“It’s really changing the model for cities to innovate and improve in the civic space by sharing the opportunity between business, non-for-profits, city governments, community-based organizations and individuals,” Barton told Breaking Energy.
Once an idea is posted, and is featured on a colorful post-it note on the site’s homepage as pictured above, it is directly matched against existing NYC programs. If the site’s algorithm finds something similar, it will automatically suggests the project to the user. If nothing similar exists, the site will connect the user with sources for funding for the project they’ve suggested.
According to Barton, the city has freed up some mini grants in coordination with the recent site launch, as a way to further encourage community leadership on energy efficiency.
“The key for us with ‘Change by Us’ is moving from ideas to solutions,” Barton said.
He says initial programming for the site was designed for general idea crowd sourcing, something that could be used by leaders in a wide range of businesses and organizations to organize the implementation of a project.
The site is constantly updated with the status of various programs and can track a project from its initial idea stage through further brainstorming and task assignments to eventual implementation.
The NYC Change By Us website was sponsored mostly by Rockefeller Foundation and James L. Knight Foundation, with the Case Foundation giving money specifically for the NYC project. The Rockefeller and Knight foundations will sponsor similar websites in future cities as well.
Local Projects will continue to develop the site, adding video and photo options and connecting it with various other social networking sites.
“We will launch as a platform in all these different cities and we’ll be able to see how all these blossom and evolve simultaneously,” Barton said.
